Ghana has urbanised rapidly in the past century, and now a half of Ghanaians live in cities. A quarter of the population inhabits cities along Ghana’s coastline. Coastal Ghanaians, many poor and urbanised, are increasingly vulnerable to future impacts of climate change and are already suffering the effects of flooding. Managing climate-related risks in coastal environments has come under scrutiny in recent years. However, a comprehensive framework to manage these risks in Ghana is still lacking.

With support from CDKN, the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) at the University of Ghana initiated a research project to give vulnerable communities, and state and non-state actors the opportunity to collectively rethink the impacts of climate change on coastal livelihoods and improve communication of appropriate interventions across local, district and national platforms. The project aims to help integrate climate risk analysis and disaster risk reduction into coastal cities’ development plan.

This paper, Ghana: Climate change risk communciations framcework for coastal urban development policy, reviews the capacity building workshops held by RIPS, which took government, NGO and civic representations on study tours to witness coastal erosion and livelihood impacts first hand and discuss solutions. District and regional-level ‘platforms’ were held to identify policy challenges. These activities also provided a platform to link vulnerable communities to different levels of planning; from district to national policy discussions.

Further reading:

Project homepage: Building climate resilience through risk communication in Ghana’s growing coastal cities